Expressiveness, Resemblance, and Imagination

In these comments to Marta Benenti’s book Expressiveness, I make two points. The first concerns the relation between the proposal defended by Benenti and what are generally referred to as resemblance theories of expressiveness. My aim is to understand how far we can take Benenti’s case against the role of resemblance in expressiveness. The second is related to a debate internal to the philosophy of music, namely, the one concerning formalism. While taking a position with respect to this issue falls outside of the aims and scope of Benenti’s book, I note that her proposal may have interesting consequences for the future of this central debate.